This Swedish newborn was one of the babies who participated in the study.

Infants are known for their impressive ability to learn language, which most scientists say kicks in somewhere around the six-month mark. But a new study indicates that language recognition may begin even earlier, while the baby is still in the womb. Using a creative means of measurement, researchers found that babies could already recognize their mother tongue by the time they left their mothers’ bodies.

The researchers tested American and Swedish newborns between seven hours and three days old. Each baby was given a pacifier hooked up to a computer. When the baby sucked on the pacifier, it triggered the computer to produce a vowel sound—sometimes in English and sometimes in Swedish. The vowel sound was repeated until the baby stopped sucking. When the baby resumed sucking, a new vowel sound would start.

The sucking was used as a metric to determine the babies’ interest in each vowel sound. More interest meant more sucks, according to the study soon to be published in Acta Paediatrica. In both countries, babies sucked on the pacifier longer when they heard foreign vowel sounds as compared to those of their mom’s native language. The researchers suggest that this is because the babies already recognize the vowels from their mothers and were keen to learn new ones.

Hearing develops in a baby’s brain at around the 30th week of pregnancy, which leaves the last 10 weeks of gestation for babies to put that newfound ability to work. Baby brains are quick to learn, so a better understanding of these mechanisms may help researchers figure out how to improve the learning process for the rest of us.

The Australian black flying-fox (Pteropus alecto) was one of the bat species whose genome was sequenced in the study.

Bats are pretty impressive critters. They are notorious for carrying viruses like Ebola and SARS, but somehow avoid getting these diseases themselves. They are the only mammal that can fly, and they live far longer than other mammals their size. What’s their secret? Researchers in Australia sequenced two different bat genomes and found that these unique bat characteristics are not only genetically linked, but may help in the treatment of human diseases.

Flying takes a lot of energy, and the free radicals produced by burning energy are damaging to DNA. Bats, however, have evolved a suite of proteins to not only get rid of these toxins, but also detect and repair damaged DNA. This keeps the bats healthy and allows them to live longer.

The surprises don’t stop there. When researchers looked at bats’ immune response to the viruses they carry, they found something quite novel. When mammals, including humans, die from a virus, it is usually due to an extreme immune reaction called a cytokine storm. It’s the body’s attempt to save itself, but it can actually do the opposite. Bats, however, are missing the genes that trigger this reaction—they don’t experience a cytokine storm, allowing them to carry the viruses unharmed. Understanding how they do this may eventually allow researchers to create drugs that suppress cytokine storms in people or to develop gene therapies to prevent them.

jonklinger writes with the lead from his report on a move to hamper internet freedom in Israel: “Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill that authorizes police officers to issue warrants to Internet service providers to block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement. The bill itself proposes that such administrative procedures shall be clandestine and that court decisions shall be made ex-parte, where some of the court’s ruling will not be even dislosed to the owner of the website, and the court may hear and use inadmissible evidence.”

New submitter Likes Microsoft writes “Yesterday, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) introduced a Net Neutrality bill aimed at ISPs using data caps soley for profiteering purposes, rather than the ‘traffic management’ purpose they often claim. The text of the bill is available at Wyden’s Senate page. It would require ISPs to be certified by the FCC before implementing data caps. It says, in part, ‘The [FCC] shall evaluate a data cap proposed by an Internet service provider to determine whether the data cap functions to reasonably limit network congestion in a manner that does not unnecessarily discourage use of the Internet.’ In a statement, Wyden said, ‘Americans are increasingly tethered to the Internet and connecting more devices to it, but they don’t really have the tools to effectively manage data consumption across their networks. Data caps create challenges for consumers and run the risk of undermining innovation in the digital economy if they are imposed bluntly and not designed to truly manage network congestion.’”

megla writes “The BBC is reporting that the Draft Communications Bill is going to be re-written following widespread opposition. The hugely controversial bill would, as it stands, require ISPs to retain vast amounts of data and grant broad powers to authorities to access it, in some cases without needing any permission at all. For those who are interested in the gritty details the first parliamentary report into the legislation is sharply critical at times. This is good news for anyone in the UK who values their privacy, but it may not be enough. Many would prefer to see the bill scrapped entirely.” Opposition to the bill, at least in its original form, isn’t just from crazy civil libertarian types, either; reader judgecorp points out that it even includes Deputy prime minister of Britain Nick Clegg.

New submitter DJ Jones sent in good news in the attempts to update privacy rights for stored electronic communication. From the article: “The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strengthen privacy protection for e-mails by requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant from a judge in most cases before gaining access to messages in individual accounts stored electronically. The bill is not expected to make it through Congress this year and will be the subject of negotiations next year with the Republican-led House.” The EFF seems pretty happy with the proposed changes, but notes that the bill also reduces the protections of the Video Privacy Protection Act in order to allow Netflix et al to sell your viewing history.

SchrodingerZ writes “Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, has drafted a bill for the internet. The bill, aptly named the Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA), is, ‘a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet.’ In short it hopes to deny any new government bills related to lawmaking on the internet for the next two years. The bill was first made public on the website Reddit, and is currently on the front page of Keepthewebopen.com, a website advocating internet rights. ‘Together we can make Washington take a break from messing w/ the Internet,’ Issa writes on his Reddit post. The initial response to the bill has been mixed. Users of Reddit are skeptical of the paper’s motives and credibility. As of now, the bill is just a discussion draft, whether it will gain footing in the future is up in the air.”